The Acting Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mr Jacob Kor, has directed all heads of basic schools in the country to send the names of teachers enrolled in distance or sandwich programmes without authorisation, to the headquarters for them to be dealt with.

According to the Acting Director-General, such practice where teachers abandoned the classroom to go for further courses, had led to poor examination results, and therefore, the GES would have to reverse the trend.

Mr Kor who was addressing groups within the GES in Koforidua said, the GES was not against teachers furthering their education or enhancing their career, “but our worry is the increasing rate at which our classrooms are being abandoned to the detriment of the children.”

He noted that, most of the teachers enrolled in such programmes sometimes abandoned the classrooms for weeks or days, and questioned the rationale behind that when the basic duty of the teacher was being compromised for personal interest.

The Acting Director-General noted that over the years, the GES called for support from the universities to ensure that teachers enrolled in their programmes did not abandon the classrooms, and said this had not yielded the desired results.

Mr Kor said heads of the various institutions were mandated to take action in the interest of education, and therefore urged them to perform their duties without fear or favour, to improve the standard of education in the country.

The Eastern Regional Director of Education, Mrs Rosetta Addison-Sackey, appealed to the Director-General to look at the issue of replacing retired security personnel, since their absence was causing security problems in the schools.

She also appealed for a review of the extra classes levy, to enable the teachers have ample time to complete the syllabus, explaining that, there were evidences to support that most schools did not get the full complement of a class in the first term.